[gok]

The coronavirus containment stories in South Korea and Singapore are being brought up a lot, but both are essentially completely irrelevant to the situation in North America or Europe. South Korea has 9 international airports and a single literally impassable land border; Singapore has one airport and one tightly controlled border crossing bridge. Containment under these circumstances is a somewhat tractable problem. It's comparable to, say, Hawaii, which currently has 13 cases despite the widely incompetent American government response.

Europe has hundreds of international airports and uncountable open border crossings. Containment was never really a possibility in Europe. Containment in mainland North America was even less likely. Even if governments wanted to close borders between states/provinces, there's no mechanism to do so.